Visiting Hours are Over
by Uncle Charlie
Summary: Ever think about the guy stuck outside the hospital room door, making sure nothing happens? A Working Stiffs story


Everybody figures that once you get past Survival School, life in UNCLE is a piece of cake. Possibly if the cake is chiseled from granite and all you have to cut it with is a plastic knife and fork. Section Three is hard, much harder than Section Two.

We are the work horses, though. We do all the crap jobs that Section Two can't be bothered with. We do courier runs, stake outs and babysitting. See, UNCLE is a lot of things, but it ain't a hospital and when an agent gets knocked around or bruised a little, they get sent to Medical. It's a small group of rooms down in the basement. There's a doc and a couple of nurses, but they aren't prepared for anything major. Those cases get sent to one of a variety of hospitals in the city that UNCLE has a special contract with. And when that happens, I get fingered. I sit by the door to their room and make sure no one tries to finish what someone else started. Section Two get only the best.

As you might have guessed by now, I don't have a lot of compassion for the Section Two guys. Most of them can't be bothered with us once they get that status. Even some of my former classmates from Survival School, guys I was better than on the range or in the classroom, don't even bother to give me the time of day now. Cutter fingered me as Section Three practically the day I started and he made sure I didn't get the time or the training I would need to for anything but Section Three. He's funny that way. Sure, he'd deny, but it's true.

Anyhow, the hours are easy, no one is shooting at me, and I always have a book in my pocket if I get really bored. I like to people watch and have gotten to know some of the staff at the hospitals we frequent. I've dated a couple of the nurses, but nothing serious.

In between those assignments, I do routine dull stuff. I've got good organizational skills, so I tend to spend a lot of time in the filing department, trying to make heads and tails out of all the paperwork that is the backbone of any business. And don't make a mistake, we are a business.

"Hey, Fergie, Conrad's looking for you." C.J. poked his head around the corner of the door to the file room.

"I'm not hard to find. Just look for some boring job and here I am," I muttered.

"Hey, there's no such thing as a small job in UNCLE." C.J. was on the brown-nose express for promotion. "He wanted you to report to his office like three minutes ago. He said to drop whatever you were doing and see him."

So, I literally dropped the files and started to leave. C.J. cleared his throat and I looked at him. He was staring at the piles of folders and the opened file drawers. "What?"

"Are you supposed to leave that stuff like that?"

"You said drop what I was doing, so I did. There's nothing proprietary there." He started to reach for a stack and I stepped in front of them. "Don't." Hell, it wasn't much, but it was mine and I'd be damned if I let him claim this along with everything else. "Tell Conrad I'll be along after I'm done, then. If he wants me, he knows where I am."

"I don't—"

"Just tell Conrad I will be there in a half hour." I returned to the filing. After a minute, C.J. was gone.

I was struggling to figure out which file took precedence over the other – tough when all you have to differentiate them was a time stamp of just a few seconds difference.

"There you are."

I didn't turn at Conrad's voice. "Here I am."

"You need to come with me. I have an assignment for you."

"I'll be another hour at this." To be honest, I had about twenty more minutes' worth of work to fill the three hours left of my work day.

"You're done now. Secure these files and come to my office."

I resisted saluting, but within five minutes, I walked into his cramped office. "You wanted to see me?"

"Get suited up and head over to Mercy."

I sighed. All I wanted was to go home, pop a cold one and watch TV. However, I knew better than argue. "That's what this is all about? Who's the package?"

"No idea, but you were personally requested."

 _Peachy,_ I thought. But at least I now knew what tweaked his nose out of joint.

Within fifteen minutes, I was parked in a chair in front of a closed door. The name below the room number was John Smith. All our agents were John Smith when they checked in, just in case THRUSH was watching.

I didn't ask who was in the room. It didn't matter really. My job was to keep them safe and as with the filing, it's not much of a job, but it's mine. They couldn't take this away from me, not that anyone was trying.

So, I was sitting there watching the world move past.

Nurse Stacy was dealing with a difficult patient across the way. He kept moaning, groaning and hitting his call button. He wanted a blanket. She brought him two, he wanted three. He wanted to sit up, then complained that she made him sit up. I would have punched his lights out by now. She caught my eye as she hurried from the room and hunched her shoulders. I thought about going in there and explaining to the dude what real pain was, but that would have meant leaving my post. I didn't do that, never even to pee. Thankfully, I was given breaks every few hours.

Nurse Sarah was delivering medicine, her shoes squeaking on the tile floor. "Back again, Fergie?"

"I'm a glutton for punishment." She opened the door and carried a tray inside. It had a few pills in a little paper cup. The white one I knew was for pain, the little orange one was a sleeping pill and there were a couple others I wasn't sure about. I caught a glimpse of a leg in traction and didn't envy whoever was attached to it. Being flat on your back with one of those couldn't be fun.

An orderly moved slowly down the hall and I decided that least there's someone whose job even worse than mine. Visitors were leaving and the loudspeaker announced that visiting hours were over.

That's when I saw him hobbling down the hall. At first sight, all my alert buttons hit full on. There was a way he moved and as he drew closer, I began to relax sort of. It was one of Waverly's Golden boys – Kuryakin.

My experience with Kuryakin had been few and far between. He taught an explosives class, which I wasn't very good at.

"Mr. Ferguson, what are you doing?" I looked up and dropped my screwdriver into the bomb I was attempt to defuse. There was a suddenly blast of air in my face, telling me my bomb had just exploded and theoretically killed me.

"I was… I have no clue what I was doing." I thought he'd have yelled at me, but instead he smiled.

"Finally someone with honesty." He reached into my dummy bomb and reset it. At least he was better than Cutter – that bastard would have used a real bomb. He pulled out three wires, black, white and green. "Which is positive?"

"The… white."

"And the black?"

"Is negative and the green is the ground."

"Which one do you cut?"

"The red one."

He smiled. "The clock is ticking." I snipped the white one and the bomb chimed. "Very good." Looking around to see that no one else was paying attention, he murmured. "You know all of this. Why are you struggling?"

I didn't know, either then or now. I didn't hate Section Three and there was nothing about Section Two that attracted me. I'd seen Kuryakin around headquarters after that. He nodded when we passed, but generally he paid me less attention than he did the secretaries. Rumors always circulated about him and his partner, but I never paid them much attention.

"Agent Ferguson," he murmured as he got closer. I had to admit he looked like hell and I wondered why he wasn't in a hospital room himself. "Is everything going well?"

"No trouble, sir."

He smiled at that. "I'm not a sir," he said quietly, as if he was afraid of waking someone up. "How is he doing?"

Then it dawned on me. Solo must be on the other side of the door. "No one has come in or out." I bit off the sir and, nodding, Kuryakin pushed open the door and disappeared inside. Visiting hours were over, but I wasn't about to tell him that. I wasn't about to tell him anything.

Carson came walking up at that point. I'd seen him around HQ and shared a table with him in the canteen a couple of times. He was fast tracked to Section Two, so we didn't have much in common and to be honest, I didn't care much for him. I could tell he wouldn't as much as nod to me once he got his promotion. Frankly, it was a surprise to see him here. This was on par with courier work

"What's happening, Ferguson?" He smiled. "I'm your relief."

I glanced at my watch. He was early, really early, too early. "What's going on?"

"Oh, I finished up what I was doing and was told to relieve you. They like us to have scope, you know. So you got the Golden Boys in there, huh? We might as well get coffee. They'll be at it for hours."

I shook my head. "I don't think so. Kuryakin looked pretty beat up." That's when a little bell went off in my head. _How the hell did he know Solo was in there?_ "That's just a rumor."

"Well, there's a little truth in every rumor." He winked and suddenly I got a little angry. I didn't know Kuryakin well and Solo even less, but when a guy was beat up, there was no call to take advantage of that. "You know what, Carson, I'm fine. I'll see you back here at ten."

"One-time offer. Take it or leave it."

"Then I'll leave it." There was no way I was risking Conrad's ire over a couple of hours.

"I'm serious. If I leave, I won't be coming back."

"Okay, it won't be the first night I've spent in a chair." I leaned back and crossed my feet.

"I'm trying to be a nice guy here." Carlson's voice went up a little and Nurse Stacy's head snapped in his direction.

I shushed him. "I appreciate it, Carlson, but I'm really okay."

Then he reached quickly into his jacket pocket and my hand went for my weapon. "What the hell?" he muttered as he looked down at the P-38. Slowly he pulled his hand out into the open and he was holding a money clip. "I was just going to offer to pay you. I need this assignment for my performance review."

"Then go to Conrad and ask for an assignment. Section Two agents are always getting hurt."

"But this is the top of the pile – Solo and Kuryakin."

I didn't point out it was just Solo. I was still trying to figure out how he found out when the orderly came lumbering up with a wheelchair.

"What's going on?"

"I need to take the patient for some X-Rays."

Now, we'd lost Kuryakin to something similar not all that long ago and there was something about this orderly that I just didn't like. "Can I see the orders?"

He looked at me like I'd just sprouted a second head and Nurse Stacy came up. "Is there something wrong?"

"I don't think so. This orderly says he's taking my patient for X-rays, but I'm a little confused. Why would you give a fellow a sleeping pill if you were going to take him X-rays a little while later?"

"We wouldn't…"

That's when the orderly pushed her. My first thought was to grab her to keep her from falling, but I countered that with a punch to the orderly instead. Nurse Stacy screamed and I dodged a right. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Carlson rabbiting down the hall like a scared little boy. "No Section Two for you," I wanted to yell, but I was hard pressed to avoid being beaten into a pulp.

Reinforcements arrived and the room's door opened. I looked and that was my big mistake. I didn't see the chair being swung at my head until it was way too late.

I woke up to a wash of white and realized I was looking up at the ceiling of my very own hospital room. My head ached and I swear I could feel every hair.

I mumbled something and there was movement. Nurse Sharon was there, her eyes glowing with pride.

"Hello, Fergie. Glad you could join us."

"Not me," I muttered and coughed. The action brought tears to my eyes. She fed me a couple ice chips and smiled.

"Just relax. We were just able to give you something for the pain. What you did was really brave."

"Not brave, stupid." I said or at least I tried to. My mouth didn't seem to be working really well.

"I would disagree. You gave the doctors a run for their money, but you didn't sustain any brain injuries. Mostly, it's just bruising and swelling. Oh, and a broken jaw."

There was a noise and she turned. I didn't bother. There was this odd detached sensation starting to wash over me. It wasn't bad. In fact, it was sort of relaxing.

Another figure came into view and it was Kuryakin. He looked better than the last time I saw him. In fact, he looked fine and suddenly I wondered just how much time had passed.

"Mr. Ferguson," he said softly. "I'm glad you have woken up."

"How long?"

"Nearly a day." Nurse Sharon said, consulting my chart. Kuryakin locked eyes with her and she nodded and left.

"You heal fast."

After making sure Sharon was gone, Kuryakin said, "It's amazing when you can do with makeup. I wanted to thank you for what you did."

The makeup line didn't make sense to me. "Getting hit with a chair? Doesn't seem noteworthy."

"You kept THRUSH from getting to Napoleon. To me, that is huge. You created enough of a diversion to thwart their plans." He paused and then added. "We've had our eyes on this hospital for a while as a possible THRUSH trap. While Napoleon wasn't really hurt, the cast did limit his mobility significantly. Thank you for keep him safe. I knew if anyone could do it, it would be you."

"You were the one who requested me."

"Yes and I'm glad now that I did."

"Carlson…"

"Who?"

"He knew Solo was here and he tried to talk me out of my assignment. They he bolted just when the action heated up." I felt like I was telling tales out of school, but damn. He deserted me when I needed the back up.

"Duly noted." He patted me carefully on the shoulder. "Have you thought about transferring to Section Two? We could use agents like you."

He might have said something else after that, but I was happily chasing fluffy cloud bunnies across a rainbow sky. And I knew that right outside my door, there would be someone parked there, keeping me safe. It's not such a bad job, after all.


End file.
